


protector

by kalypsobean



Category: Moonlight (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 21:40:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7239496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalypsobean/pseuds/kalypsobean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In such a small society, everyone has their place, and everyone is the same. Except Mick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	protector

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tarlan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/gifts).



Four hundred years, and he can count the people he trusts on one hand. Technically, he can also count them in his mind, where nobody would see, but it's amusing to use idioms that he watched take form. English, in its current form, didn't exist when he was born. 

He can't share that with Mick, because Mick isn't old enough yet to really understand.

 

He met Mick in the Sixties, probably; even for a vampire, time somewhat lost its meaning then, as if the whole aura of free, luxuriant and reckless impairment somehow could be inhaled, or perhaps it was in their blood, affecting them as they drank and partied and lived. One of the tricks to living so long without being noticed was to be in sight; to live and die and live. There are those of his kind who specialise in that, crafting new identities and transferring assets with only a small piece going missing. There were issues, though; some of them were not in control, the time being as it was, and Los Angeles being the fastest time of them all.

He remembers it was as easy as if he'd placed an ad in the newspaper: "Wanted: Private Eye, must work nights, discreet, must have fangs." Another thing that has changed while he watched is that people no longer know everyone; they can live in the same city, on the same block, and there will be so many people between them that they will never really see each other.

They have rules, and their society has a structure. Within that structure people have roles. His role is to exist, to enjoy; he has the money and connections to do so and his job is to protect that. He has enough influence to hide their secret, but not on his own. He heard of Mick before they met, of course; the town was still small then, soaked in glamour that made it feel larger and brighter than it really was, making it harder to hide. 

"I need someone," he said, slipping into the room Mick called an office. He waited, patiently, while Mick sniffed and then looked directly at him. "Not going to hurt you," he said, when he saw Mick's hand slide under the desk. "My name is Josef." 

"Mick, but you knew that." Mick stood up from his chair, didn't offer a handshake.

"It's on the door, yeah," he said. "But I heard about you before. Private investigator, huh?" 

"Says on the door," Mick said. "Got something you need investigating?"

"Not exactly," he said. "Mind if we sit? This might take a while."

Because nobody operated in Josef's town without him knowing, then; not like now, where there's a small industry dedicated to taking care of problems before he even knows about them. They work together almost seamlessly, as if they were chosen for the roles that best suited them.

Josef chose Mick because he was still young, stayed close enough to humans to still understand them even when it became impossible to live among them. It almost happened by accident, that Mick handled the problems where the seams fell apart, frayed and broken; Mick had handled his own problem, after all. More importantly, he wasn't a part of the system, the insulation they'd built around themselves. 

 

The problem with being four hundred years old is that he remembers all of the reasons that things happened the way they did, and he doesn't get the luxury of enjoying how things are now without the ghost of how they were. Time was, he asked Mick to intervene in a few small incidents, make sure there was nothing for the police to hold onto, let cases go cold or solved without all the facts. 

Time was, Mick did something and it was done right. And then, time passed, and the imperfections came out, same as they always did. Not Mick's fault, of course, not anything anyone could have done; Mick still cleaned it up, same as always, even when he didn't realise he was doing it. For a while there, though, a good thirty years or more, Mick was the one he learned to trust the most. It's not that all this undoes that, because there's enough between them that he can understand, that he's willing to stick around, and Mick's place in their system is unique and assured. The illusion, though, is shattered.

 

Mick used to party with him, and eat the way they all ate then. There was a time when Mick was the same as him, in that regard, still enjoying all the pleasures that grew only stronger as their senses intensified. It stopped, though, some time around when Mick had to kill his sire and settled back into a human life that he'd just learned to live without. As if to atone for that, he became better, somehow, escaping from the endlessness of being just outside time, an observer. Josef envied him that, a bit; he hid it as best he could, because weakness would be seen, a way to steal from him the security he'd earned, but it was there. Mick made himself another human life, in the shadows and at night, among the darkness inherent in human nature, but he had one, and he rose above the excess and the violence.

 

The last thing Josef wanted was to see Mick make the same mistake he had, and fall. Experience, be thy teacher, he wanted to say. Learn from me. Let her go. 

But Mick watched her, as if, somehow, he knew the future, that she would stay close to him. 

Josef, watching Mick, looking back, wondered if that had been the reason for it all in the first place. What if, of course, being that what plagues the mind when there is all the time in the world to ponder. 

He had wanted Mick to be truly better, to play his role and be close to him instead of choosing her, choosing humans, over and over, as they all did. Perhaps, if he'd never placed Mick in his role, drawn him in and learned to trust him, it wouldn't have hurt so much when he fell, the same way he had; perhaps, it was always meant to be that way and Mick was the only one who knew.

Maybe he was meant to learn instead of teach.

 

"Still drinking this? It's awful, I don't know how you do it," he says. The tube is hard and rubbery in his mouth, a most displeasing texture. 

"Give it back if you don't want it," Mick says. His voice is devoid of expression; it's a learned response, for this has happened before.

"No," Josef says, holding the back where Mick can't reach it. 

 

If Mick has to fall, Josef promises himself he'll be there to pick up the pieces.


End file.
